The Story of the Jews with Simon Schama
The Story of the Jews with Simon Schama is a five-part series which explores the influence of Jewish culture on the world.
Yeshiva University has kindly uploaded two segments I participated in.
On the spread of monotheism and the Talmudic process:
On the role of women in Judaism:
Interview about the Qumran Tefillin
Qumran Phylactery
The recent “discovery” of the Qumran Tefillin has caused much excitement in the academic world and has also captured the imagination of the public. The Orthodox Ami Magazine has published an interview with me about what we know so far about the Dead Sea Scrolls Tefillin and what we may or may not learn from opening the small scrolls.
Read the full interview here: “New” Dead Sea Scroll Tefillin Discovered
Pre-sectarian Literature
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Among those texts gathered into their library by the Qumran sectarians were four out of the five parts of 1 Enoch and the book of Jubilees. Although these books are not entirely preserved in the scrolls, it is certain that the members of the sect would have had available full copies of these texts (except that the Similitudes [Parables] of Enoch were not part of the collection). Accordingly, we will consider these texts, even where the Qumran manuscripts do not preserve the specific passages. We will see that these passages routinely assume that the state of exile continued through the Persian period, uninterrupted, into the Hellenistic period.
Within the Enochic corpus, among the earliest materials is the Apocalypse of Weeks, dating to immediately pre-Maccabean times.[1] This text divides biblical history into “weeks” and places the exile in the sixth week. Here the text states:
And after this in the sixth week all those who live in it (will be) blinded, and the hearts of all, lacking wisdom, will sink into impiety. … and at its end the house of sovereignty will be burnt with fire, and in it the whole race of the… Continue reading
